In high-end arena (field, pitch or stadium) lighting, like the Philips ArenaVision products, a large number of lighting units or luminaires are distributed around an arena or stadium to attempt to create a uniform light intensity on the field or pitch. For example a football stadium may have a lighting plan or design where the lighting system contains more than 100 luminaires, and typically 200 to 600 luminaires, each located on the stadium and with a desired aiming point on the pitch to attempt to provide a uniform lighting distribution. In stadiums and arenas the sports area is lit by so-called pitch lighting to create a well-lit environment. Typically the lighting system planner generates a light plan which contains for each luminaire information, such as the type of luminaire, the mounting location and orientation of the luminaire, and the aiming point (typically relative to the centre of the sports area). Furthermore the lighting plan can contain such information as how the luminaires are to be arranged relative to each other, how the luminaires are coupled to controllers (for example a wiring configuration) and furthermore how the controllers are coupled together (for example the wiring configuration of the controllers). This lighting plan attempts to generate the desired lighting effect.
Based on the lighting plan an installer mounts the luminaires in the stadium infrastructure. In this phase, the installer also has to direct the luminaire at the desired aiming location in the field using the lighting plan orientation values as defined in the lighting plan.
Having installed the luminaires it is then necessary to commission the lighting system. Commissioning of the lighting system involves determining logical connections between luminaires (and controllers). The commissioning operations may for example assign logical addresses to luminaires. The logical addresses enable the lighting system to employ dynamic effects and static lighting patterns as specific physical luminaires may be addressed by a (dynamic) scene controller via their logical addresses.
There are many methods for commissioning. One method is to label individual luminaires with bar code labels and register the connection of specific luminaires to scene controller output connections. This process is cumbersome, expensive and error-prone. Experiences with this method from other application areas (e.g. street lighting) indicate that the multitude of process steps (label generation, label application in factory, label scanning, assignment to controller output ID) causes up to 60% error rate in practical circumstances.
Other methods include visual commissioning. Existing methods have the problem that it is very difficult to identify the exact physical location of a specific luminaire in a long row, even when only a single luminaire is lit. For example it may be too difficult to count the luminaire number from a specific location within a circle of 300 luminaires. (e.g. the third to the right of the 14th entrance in the stadium).